1) Working hard, being self-reliant and taking responsibility for your own life are good for you and will make you much happier than having too much leisure time, being overly dependent and giving others responsibility for your life.

2) The more a behavior is rewarded with attention, fame, sympathy or money, the more of it we’ll see. We recognize this almost instinctively when it comes to good behaviors, but we also tend to almost habitually block it out when it comes to behaviors we don’t want to encourage.

3) There’s nothing shameful about being poor — but, if you stay poor over the long haul in a country like America, you’re doing something wrong.